WSJ: To Advertisers, Twitter's a Fledgling

Twitter Inc.'s foray into advertising is receiving mixed reviews among marketers, underscoring the challenges of turning the popular micro-blogging service into a highly profitable enterprise.

According to Emily Steel and Amir Afati at wsj.com, The popularity of Twitter has fueled expectations that marketers could use the service to target relevant ads to consumers interested in real-time information about breaking events and other topics. Since launching its much-anticipated advertising products in April, Twitter has signed on more than 30 big-name brands, including Coca-Cola Co., Virgin America and Starbucks Corp., to test them.

Twitter offers "Promoted Tweets," where marketers pay to have their messages listed as the first result when a user conducts a search on Twitter.com; the site handled about 130 million searches in August, according to comScore Inc. The company soon will experiment with ads that target users based on the content in their tweets, or messages.

Marketers who tried out Twitter's new advertising product at launch didn't pay for the initial tests, according to two digital-ad executives. Now, Twitter is selling Promoted Tweets for upwards of $100,000.

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